Do you agree that someone should have the right to copyright their product?
No. They may have that privilege, if Congress sees fit to grant it under its limited authorization to offer monopolies in order to promote progress in the useful arts. But it is not a right, like the right to life, or liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.
Do you believe that it is acceptable to rip off musicians by getting their music without paying for it?
I don't believe that obtaining music without paying for it is always "ripping off" a musician. But no one is suggesting that musicians should not get paid - only that monetizing their product using a government-granted monopoliy is inefficient and counter-productive. It is a silly practice that worked for a brief period of human history, but will not work any longer.
Do you believe it is acceptable to rip off software companies by pirating their product and distributing it to others?
You and I probably disagree about the definition of "piracy," and distributing software only occasionally results in "ripping off" a software company. But see above, substituting "software company" for "musician" - software companies should get paid, but copyright is a thoroughly bad mechanism to get that done. It inhibits progress, and shrinks the total amount of available revenue (in other words, software companies probably make _less_ because of their reliance on copyright. I'm told and believe that that has been demonstrably true of music publishing companies.)
As far as the "right" to use "someone else's product" for free, I think you are mischaracterizing facts. By default, new ideas and creations belong to the public domain - to everyone. That is how the world functioned until remarkably recently, and it worked well. So the question isn't "since when did the public have the right to use things that are in the public domain?" (answer: since always) but "since when did it make sense to withdraw things from the public domain?" The answer to that is, "maybe never, but certainly only if it is efficient to do so and if doing so actually promotes progress."
Homer (if there was a "Homer") wrote his two great, epic songs without the benefit of copyright. He probably is just getting the credit for his version of traditional stories that had been orally transmitted for generations. The "Pants On the Ground" guy has a copyright. Progress in the Useful Arts?
After that one, the Founders wrote some more stuff in the Constitution. For instance, they amended it to state that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press". Fair to guess that most people who hate (or at least seek to restrain) individuals that exercise their unabridged (and unabridgeable!) right to speak and write freely, including by speaking and writing things that other people originally spoke or wrote, are Communists?
I had a (successful) career writing open source software for money, and selling consulting services. Copyright got in my way, and I continue to see it as an impediment. The Constitution certainly does not guarantee anyone a copyright, it merely authorizes Congress to offer one if doing so promotes progress (subject to the limitations of the First Amendment and elsewhere). Congress has far exceeded that extremely limited authorization, and people who recognize that generally are not doing so out of "hate," but out of patriotism and pragmatism.
Agree that this is collosally inefficient. Disagree that it transfers wealth to lawyers - rights are usually cleared by a clearance department, with little involvement by legal. So even _that_ purported benefit fails.
How did you get that out of "I think it's highly unlikely"?
This is not the kind of marketplace immorality for which Microsoft is known. I do not have Ian's experience with the company, but given my limited interaction with its US headquarters I would be shocked if the allegation were seriously leveled at Redmond. But who knows what goes on in their overseas sales channels? It is just barely possible that some idiot or idiots at the long end of some branch of the Microsoft tree engaged in unethical behavior. It is a big tree, and hard to account for every leaf. I think Ian's point was that if there was such an idiot (and it is impossible to rule the eventuality out,) the idiot once caught will be dealt with harshly - Microsoft will not countenance this sort of behavior. But the fact that that can't be ruled out is no more a statement that it "may have actually happened" then would be the statement that it cannot be ruled out that senshikaze is a fool. Unlikely, but it cannot be ruled out if prior posts were the result of chimps at keyboards or random chance.
This assumes, first, that it is the _scientist's_ judgment as to what is happening that determines whether the work is in the public domain. Substitute humans for chimps and that certainly would not be the case: if a lab gave a bunch of people cameras and told them to shoot footage for a day, the lab might think the footage is raw experimental data but the movie-makers would still be entitled to a copyright in it (to them, it was a creative work). One of many reasons it is wise to have a release and pre-assignment of rights as part of your participation agreement.
The difference is, here the individuals shooting footage are likely not "authors" under the copyright law. So no copyright vested in them upon creation. The "authors" are likely the researchers.
Incidentally, I do not think that intention matters. The reason raw experimental data passes into the public domain is not because the researcher has no creative intent, it is because the data has no creative content (and, thus, is not an appropriate subject matter for copyright). Certainly the creative and original interpretation of the data is subject to copyright. Here (arguably), the raw experimental data is a list of things at which chimps pointed cameras, not the recording of what they saw when they did so.
I don't think so. I don't think a chimp can be an "author" at all, at least under US copyright law. Initial ownership vests in the author or authors of a work. 17 USC 201(a).
I think it is irrelevant whether or not the chimp can have IP rights. The question is only whether the chimp is an "author". I am not aware of authority defining "author" (except in the "works made for hire" jurisprudence, which I take to be irrelevant,) but I'd wager a court would hold that a chimp isn't one.
Well... no. Despite PETA's propaganda, animals do not have recognized rights (except in the loose sense that any responsibility in a person creates a correspondent and correlative right in another - but even that is probably a stretch, because the animals do not have the right to enforce the responsibility). Instead, there is a prohibition on certain conduct against animals. To say that implies a right is a bit like saying your house has a right to avoid most nocturnal intrusions.
Anyhow, for better or worse the animals here are likely instrumentalities of the producer, who retains the rights.
In Federal Court, the new pleading standards are designed to significantly cut back on frivolous suits like this one. If there are no persuasive allegations that are sufficient to make out a claim, the complaint does not pass Rule 8 muster and should be dismissed. While specificity is not required, a general allegation that someone did something bad should not work.
It would be fun to read the complaint and the motion to dismiss.
At over 1000 mph. Or 0 mph relative to the camera (which is what it is supposed to be measuring).
I accidentally beat one of these tickets many years ago. Like IP laws, speed limits are screwy because they are strict liability. If you have a good reason for exceeding the limit and it is not dangerous to do so (ie - conditions permit,) then you should not be ticketed for it. Cameras do a bad job of assessing such things. Cops are not perfect, but they beat cameras.
I can't argue too strenuously, because the AMA's monopoly on medschool certifications is silly and inefficient (and partly responsible for the high cost of US medical care,) but it is worth noting that the standards in most countries for medical education are _much_ lower than those in the US. Americans can easily spend 12 years in post-secondary education and OJT before they are permitted to practice with a Board certification in a specialty. In the EU, it can be done in substantially less, sometimes as few as 5 years. The same is true in other areas - UK solicitors can join the ranks after 4 years of post-secondary education, US lawyers require at least 7, etc. etc. etc.
One could argue that the extra training years do not actually improve the quality of the practitioner, but the standards are clearly different.
No, that's just the point. Mike is saying that the Court's shutting down of the websites that posted the employment contract is a bad thing. Not okay. The bad kind of censorship. Like deleting this hateful, ugly, stupid, childish, and disgusting post would be.
Incidentally, in my view it is totally appropriate to confine the speech in different fora to language and topics that are appropriate to those fora. In this forum, the topic is whether the Court's overreaching censorship was appropriate (not immigration,) and the language is supposed to be circumscribed by the terms of use.
The question is not what India does. To put it mildly, India has vastly different needs than the United States. It is not even what the EU does. Critically, the question is not even what is best for some subset of American workers. The question is what is best for the country. I think what other commentators are saying is that the country is better off with a steady stream of skilled workers from outside the US.
But this is trolling. Whether the hate-mongers were right or not is not the point. The only question is whether a Court was right (both morally and legally) in enjoining speech unrelated to the only issue before it (libelous or infringing speech). The answer to _that_ one is clear, assuming Mike has correctly represented facts and holding.
Re: Re: Censorship does not help to address ignorance
Right. I think that's Allen's point - your site, and IV, should both be allowed to spew nonsense, even if it is unmoored from fact or principles. Allen should be allowed to say that the real victims here are people who are intentionally breaking the law, and you should be allowed to say that the real victims here are people who feel as if the government has breached its employment guarantee.
But there is no need to villify someone on the basis of race, rather than conduct or whatever socially-acceptable metric is being used at the moment. Or do you disagree?
Well... yeah, we have. But that isn't the issue. The issue is that we lack expertise.
The H-1B lets in immigrants with skills that are demonstrably lacking in the US. The effect is to depress wages for that one job category, which leads to reduced investment in that area - ie, H-1B visas perpetuate H-1B visas. But that is only bad if you don't like interesting people from other cultures increasing US diversity.
As to whether it actually displaces US workers... not much, if at all. Outsourcing is much more likely to do that. Again, the reason is because the H-1B exists to decrease labor monopolies in key job descriptions. But You can outsource anything, whether or not there is a strong labor market in that job class in the US. Put differently, the point of H-1B is that every US citizen that can do the job and wants to will be employed first, and only then will we invite outsiders. Contrast that with non-immigrant work placement, where the job leaves the country regardless of whether there is a citizen who can and would like to do it.
Of course, one could do worse than to eliminate minimum wage, if one's primary interest were in encouraging employment.
It is called "false light," and you are absolutely correct. But it's hard to conceive of how this document could have been held in a false light - either it _was_ the company's policy or it wasn't. Even if it wasn't, was there some evidence that the hate-sites knew that?
Mike already got to the point that if 50% of the patents coming out of the PTO are bad, then the system is broken. That is _not_ a sign of patent quality.
There are other problems here, though - apparently, 50% of the people willing to litigate their patents had crappy ones. So your concept that such patents are "rarely an issue" is belied by the facts - they are an issue half the time. And they are costly: it costs the defendant in a patent suit a great deal (you are simply lying or misinformed when you assert that it costs a plaintiff "about as much" to sue as it costs the defendant, but we can agree that it costs the defendant a hell of a lot) to defend, even when the suit is frivolous.
Add to that that patents are an unnecessary tax on innovation to begin with (even if the current granting and enforcement mechanisms were improved,) and the system looks pretty broke.
Incidentally, the statements on the website you link to are simply wrong. For instance, the NTP patents were _not_ upheld - most of them were determined to be invalid, and the last of the lot simply evaded reevaluation by a timely settlement. While 70% of patent cases settle before trial, over 90% of other cases do - so patent cases are particularly prone to waste trial resources. Your underlying premise is absolutely correct - patent has become a tool of large enterprises to stifle innovation by small upstarts - but the solution _is_ a wholesale reform starting with improving the quality of patents granted, or abolishing the system altogether.
Re: Once again, the problem is the President and Congress, not the agency
Here here! The patent office is broken, but it is Congress's (and to a lesser degree, the President's) fault. Of course, I would go in a different direction than increasing funding or appropriating money for an upgrade. I would abolish inefficient government-granted monopolies. But you are dead on that the power to fix this resides entirely with Congress and the President, not the civil servants plodding through their days at the PTO.
I have to say I am surprised by the response. It seems to me that investigating whether commercial actors are tipping the balance in the marketplace rather than permitting the free market to set pricing is a good thing, and one of the better roles of government. To be sure, this particular investigation did not net a conviction, but I'm glad they are investigating things that look suspiciously like concerted activity (like simultaneous pricing changes).
To be sure, consumers could move to other communication platforms, and given the current pricing models the per-byte cost may not be the most meaningful measure. But that argument misses (at least) two things: 1) the medium is the message. People use text messaging instead of email in part because texting fulfills a slightly different purpose. So it really is a meaningful drain if companies are unnaturally affecting demand for text messages. 2) competing uses are part of the market landscape. Depressing one use will favor another use, and thereby unnaturally distort that landscape. That interferes with good price signaling and market behavior in just the same way that government-endorsed monopolies (in content, inventions, spectrum, land, ...) do.
On the post: University Help Desk Employee Extorts Student Using Copyright
Re: Re Headbanger
No. They may have that privilege, if Congress sees fit to grant it under its limited authorization to offer monopolies in order to promote progress in the useful arts. But it is not a right, like the right to life, or liberty, or the pursuit of happiness.
Do you believe that it is acceptable to rip off musicians by getting their music without paying for it?
I don't believe that obtaining music without paying for it is always "ripping off" a musician. But no one is suggesting that musicians should not get paid - only that monetizing their product using a government-granted monopoliy is inefficient and counter-productive. It is a silly practice that worked for a brief period of human history, but will not work any longer.
Do you believe it is acceptable to rip off software companies by pirating their product and distributing it to others?
You and I probably disagree about the definition of "piracy," and distributing software only occasionally results in "ripping off" a software company. But see above, substituting "software company" for "musician" - software companies should get paid, but copyright is a thoroughly bad mechanism to get that done. It inhibits progress, and shrinks the total amount of available revenue (in other words, software companies probably make _less_ because of their reliance on copyright. I'm told and believe that that has been demonstrably true of music publishing companies.)
As far as the "right" to use "someone else's product" for free, I think you are mischaracterizing facts. By default, new ideas and creations belong to the public domain - to everyone. That is how the world functioned until remarkably recently, and it worked well. So the question isn't "since when did the public have the right to use things that are in the public domain?" (answer: since always) but "since when did it make sense to withdraw things from the public domain?" The answer to that is, "maybe never, but certainly only if it is efficient to do so and if doing so actually promotes progress."
Homer (if there was a "Homer") wrote his two great, epic songs without the benefit of copyright. He probably is just getting the credit for his version of traditional stories that had been orally transmitted for generations. The "Pants On the Ground" guy has a copyright. Progress in the Useful Arts?
On the post: University Help Desk Employee Extorts Student Using Copyright
Re:
I had a (successful) career writing open source software for money, and selling consulting services. Copyright got in my way, and I continue to see it as an impediment. The Constitution certainly does not guarantee anyone a copyright, it merely authorizes Congress to offer one if doing so promotes progress (subject to the limitations of the First Amendment and elsewhere). Congress has far exceeded that extremely limited authorization, and people who recognize that generally are not doing so out of "hate," but out of patriotism and pragmatism.
On the post: The Ridiculousness Of Copyright Clearances: Fight Club Producers Had To Pay Off Marla Singer?
Not lawyers
On the post: Distributor Claims Microsoft Terminated Partnership After Reps Refused To Take Part In Sex/Drug Party
Re: Re:
On the post: Distributor Claims Microsoft Terminated Partnership After Reps Refused To Take Part In Sex/Drug Party
Re: Re: Seems highly unlikely to me
This is not the kind of marketplace immorality for which Microsoft is known. I do not have Ian's experience with the company, but given my limited interaction with its US headquarters I would be shocked if the allegation were seriously leveled at Redmond. But who knows what goes on in their overseas sales channels? It is just barely possible that some idiot or idiots at the long end of some branch of the Microsoft tree engaged in unethical behavior. It is a big tree, and hard to account for every leaf. I think Ian's point was that if there was such an idiot (and it is impossible to rule the eventuality out,) the idiot once caught will be dealt with harshly - Microsoft will not countenance this sort of behavior. But the fact that that can't be ruled out is no more a statement that it "may have actually happened" then would be the statement that it cannot be ruled out that senshikaze is a fool. Unlikely, but it cannot be ruled out if prior posts were the result of chimps at keyboards or random chance.
On the post: If A Video Is Filmed By Chimps... Who Owns The Copyright?
Re: Re: Legality
The difference is, here the individuals shooting footage are likely not "authors" under the copyright law. So no copyright vested in them upon creation. The "authors" are likely the researchers.
Incidentally, I do not think that intention matters. The reason raw experimental data passes into the public domain is not because the researcher has no creative intent, it is because the data has no creative content (and, thus, is not an appropriate subject matter for copyright). Certainly the creative and original interpretation of the data is subject to copyright. Here (arguably), the raw experimental data is a list of things at which chimps pointed cameras, not the recording of what they saw when they did so.
On the post: If A Video Is Filmed By Chimps... Who Owns The Copyright?
Re: Re: Hmm...
I think it is irrelevant whether or not the chimp can have IP rights. The question is only whether the chimp is an "author". I am not aware of authority defining "author" (except in the "works made for hire" jurisprudence, which I take to be irrelevant,) but I'd wager a court would hold that a chimp isn't one.
On the post: If A Video Is Filmed By Chimps... Who Owns The Copyright?
Re: Re: Corporations
Anyhow, for better or worse the animals here are likely instrumentalities of the producer, who retains the rights.
On the post: New Attempt To Get Around Section 230 In Apparent Effort To Bury Small Site With Legal Expenses
Where was this filed???
It would be fun to read the complaint and the motion to dismiss.
On the post: Parked Car Gets Multiple Speed Camera Tickets
Re:
I accidentally beat one of these tickets many years ago. Like IP laws, speed limits are screwy because they are strict liability. If you have a good reason for exceeding the limit and it is not dangerous to do so (ie - conditions permit,) then you should not be ticketed for it. Cameras do a bad job of assessing such things. Cops are not perfect, but they beat cameras.
On the post: If School Officials Got Confused By Kid's Science Project, Why Does The Kid Need Counseling?
Re:
On the post: Sometimes Protecting Free Speech Means Protecting Speech You Don't Like
Re: Free Speech
One could argue that the extra training years do not actually improve the quality of the practitioner, but the standards are clearly different.
On the post: Sometimes Protecting Free Speech Means Protecting Speech You Don't Like
Re: Re: Re: A question
Incidentally, in my view it is totally appropriate to confine the speech in different fora to language and topics that are appropriate to those fora. In this forum, the topic is whether the Court's overreaching censorship was appropriate (not immigration,) and the language is supposed to be circumscribed by the terms of use.
On the post: Sometimes Protecting Free Speech Means Protecting Speech You Don't Like
Re: Re: Re: A lot of assumptions here
But this is trolling. Whether the hate-mongers were right or not is not the point. The only question is whether a Court was right (both morally and legally) in enjoining speech unrelated to the only issue before it (libelous or infringing speech). The answer to _that_ one is clear, assuming Mike has correctly represented facts and holding.
On the post: Sometimes Protecting Free Speech Means Protecting Speech You Don't Like
Re: Re: Censorship does not help to address ignorance
But there is no need to villify someone on the basis of race, rather than conduct or whatever socially-acceptable metric is being used at the moment. Or do you disagree?
On the post: Sometimes Protecting Free Speech Means Protecting Speech You Don't Like
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The H-1B lets in immigrants with skills that are demonstrably lacking in the US. The effect is to depress wages for that one job category, which leads to reduced investment in that area - ie, H-1B visas perpetuate H-1B visas. But that is only bad if you don't like interesting people from other cultures increasing US diversity.
As to whether it actually displaces US workers... not much, if at all. Outsourcing is much more likely to do that. Again, the reason is because the H-1B exists to decrease labor monopolies in key job descriptions. But You can outsource anything, whether or not there is a strong labor market in that job class in the US. Put differently, the point of H-1B is that every US citizen that can do the job and wants to will be employed first, and only then will we invite outsiders. Contrast that with non-immigrant work placement, where the job leaves the country regardless of whether there is a citizen who can and would like to do it.
Of course, one could do worse than to eliminate minimum wage, if one's primary interest were in encouraging employment.
On the post: Sometimes Protecting Free Speech Means Protecting Speech You Don't Like
Re:
On the post: Obama Calls The Patent Office Embarrassing For Its Outdated Workflow
Re: fraud
There are other problems here, though - apparently, 50% of the people willing to litigate their patents had crappy ones. So your concept that such patents are "rarely an issue" is belied by the facts - they are an issue half the time. And they are costly: it costs the defendant in a patent suit a great deal (you are simply lying or misinformed when you assert that it costs a plaintiff "about as much" to sue as it costs the defendant, but we can agree that it costs the defendant a hell of a lot) to defend, even when the suit is frivolous.
Add to that that patents are an unnecessary tax on innovation to begin with (even if the current granting and enforcement mechanisms were improved,) and the system looks pretty broke.
Incidentally, the statements on the website you link to are simply wrong. For instance, the NTP patents were _not_ upheld - most of them were determined to be invalid, and the last of the lot simply evaded reevaluation by a timely settlement. While 70% of patent cases settle before trial, over 90% of other cases do - so patent cases are particularly prone to waste trial resources. Your underlying premise is absolutely correct - patent has become a tool of large enterprises to stifle innovation by small upstarts - but the solution _is_ a wholesale reform starting with improving the quality of patents granted, or abolishing the system altogether.
On the post: Obama Calls The Patent Office Embarrassing For Its Outdated Workflow
Re: Once again, the problem is the President and Congress, not the agency
On the post: Justice Department Finds No Problems With Text Message Prices
Unexpected response...
To be sure, consumers could move to other communication platforms, and given the current pricing models the per-byte cost may not be the most meaningful measure. But that argument misses (at least) two things: 1) the medium is the message. People use text messaging instead of email in part because texting fulfills a slightly different purpose. So it really is a meaningful drain if companies are unnaturally affecting demand for text messages. 2) competing uses are part of the market landscape. Depressing one use will favor another use, and thereby unnaturally distort that landscape. That interferes with good price signaling and market behavior in just the same way that government-endorsed monopolies (in content, inventions, spectrum, land, ...) do.
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